3.20.13 O Sweet Spontaneous Earth.... Spring Equinox

'O sweet spontaneous earth ...thou answerest them only with spring'  e.e.cummings

Oh Robin Redbreast, I hear your song, a flock of you outdoors this evening as I leave my office behind, all of you singing and talking, gathered together in these old Maples, convening upon one small grassy spot, the only area bare of recent snow for miles and miles. Deep red breasts resonating with the bright light of sunset on  this Spring Equinox, as we slowly come out of darkness and gradually move into light, the earth continuing its turns and we make our illimitable way round our sun. 

As the river streams noisily by, and all else is blanketed with late March snows, this glorious flock persists here, and I do wonder if truly the worms are awake and crawling to the surface for your evening meal.

As the same adolescent Red Tail Hawk perched back at home in my Aspen for days, each afternoon, late winter  hunger, awaits the earliest clumsy dove making for my birdseed  Squalls of Starlings come by, but who cares about seed when the whole group is not at ease together? Ah, all the rules borne of experience for each and every species, each and every avian group's wisdom. No crow eats alone here, but the lone small coyote comes nightly to the compost, their sibling either no longer with us, or well fed with more skills. New types of birds arrive in the yard daily, as the Geese leave by the thousands from the Umass fields, golden bellies blazing in the morning light, young and old, taking to the skies, to the northward path. In the evening, awaiting  my beloved outside his office, I watch as the old dog relishes the last of the snows, tasting, smelling, tromping through them with great delight, while three young crows far up in a nearby Pine harass a Hawk from the tree, darting in with assertive attacks, until it flies out, and goes for them, angered, and the three take off, chastened for the day.

As two big dogs came by  for appointments earlier this day, for knees and hips and joints, and when I finish my day, there are their delighted tracks perusing the land by the river.

And here, Spring approaches, as it has for millions of years, with or without human presence, no matter the species or living things present, still the earth does turn and moves round the sun, as this solar system and the billions of others turns and spins and moves through its cycles and times, endless, as one of my clients, a Physicist, would remind me. Not infinite, but endless, he stresses the difference. Saying ,this is pivotal for human awareness, reminding me  with his wisdom.

 And so I contemplate endlessness of the cosmos. Of  possibility. Of, in my neck of the woods, healing. Healing of limbs and walking and blood pressure and brain injury and digestion and anxiety and so much more...so much healing is possible that I watch daily in my practice, and in this, and all things, my beloved's breath in the early morning darkness, the laugh of my offspring on the phone, the banter of the six year old playing next door, the cry of the client with so much pain or sadness- so very much is possible. In all things,  I hear the song of endlessness...of possibility. In the age old Equinox, the time that binds us to so many others who have come before. Who will follow, no matter the circumstance. For the cosmos is a grand , endless thing. And we but a small precious moment in its expanse.

3.18.13 Bloggery

A few months ago I was having such a nice time going to a weekly night time writing group, hanging with people who write and everyone reads and listens and talks. It was led by Dori Ostermiller, of Writers in Progress in Florence, MA, and was luscious and informative.      

             But I wasn't well enough and had to stop. Oh well. I write all the time anyways, things knocking at the door, murmuring to me, waiting in a queue for their turn, meaningful or meaningless, all sweet and muttering and waiting a turn to come out.                                                

Comes from a childhood of silence, I sometimes think, all this streaming outward...                                                   

          Then I remembered I had a few years ago posted one small photo and piece of meandering on a free blog thing. I forgot where it was. I searched by my name, and there it was, sitting there, quietly, all alone, funny little thing.   

           I thought, well, I can pull back the curtain and let the stream of chiming packages get unpacked and stretch out and sing a little and then sit someplace where possibly i won't forget them so easily again. So I did.                                                   

           I began putting some of the new little crop-ups of song and dance on it and some old ones that called to be included and slowly got accustomed to placing some of whomever comes tumbling out...some of them...in this place, a place called...a blog.                                                                                    

  Oh, i used to wonder why on earth anyone had one of those. All those photos of your self flossing your teeth and describing your minute aspects of your day the way I imagine Twitting (I stubbornly call it Twitting) might....but since that first deposit of words and pictures, I had begun to discover some of the joys of ...blogs.                                       

I mean, there are so many different types. Paintings and poems and creative

ideas and silly funny ideas and gardens and history and the enormous variety of work and effort and theory.                                                                           

      Plus, when I have the energy, I am irretrievably curious and caring about lives. Your life. Your spider's life. So many lives.                                                 .                                                                                                     

I often think that if I could, I would be the person on Forrest Gump's bench, only I would sit there and listen and carefully look through your box of  photos of your life,  then ask you questions.

You all know, being on a computer at this moment or a phone, you all are familiar with this, all the information and blogging and tweeting and websites and all.                           

And so came a time when I thought, Okay, I get this. Some blogs are not for my consumption and some are delicious, and it's that way for everyone. Got it.                                     

 So as I rambled along, listening to when something wanted to slip by and stream out and be plucked up and placed there, I began to realize there were all these buttons in the blog place when you have a blog.                                                        

I mean, it is a shock. Don't laugh. There is actually a 'Stat page'. I said to myself, man, that has to mean statistics. Wow. What the heck. So clicked on it, and wow is right.             

 It told you how many people, people you really don't KNOW, somehow wandered their way onto your little spot of earth, of internet, with your little tiny sploggletss that called to be let out, like impatient tumbling puppies, so you did..with a bit of forethought, like, don't post your beloved getting into the shower or your kids because that wouldn't be good or blab their names or such....but there I am, anyways, and you can push a button for 'ever since you started this blog' and it tells you that thousands of people have looked at it. Hmm. Wow.

Then you push another button, and it tells you all the countries. I had to mull that over for a week or so. Right? Like, if you are sitting in one country, and you suddenly discover that thousands of people you don't know have been perusing your little small words and pictures and they are from the U.S. and Britain and Hong Kong and Germany and Russia and and Japan and Canada and Italy and Venezuela and Australia and Saudi Arabia??? Right? 

Then you say, hey, wow. Here I am, a 60 year old person, kids grown, with four cats, a sweet old dog and a beloved, living in the country, going to work and coming home and taking care of myself and writing and taking photos and wandering the hills, there are thousands of people from all these countries looking at this stuff.. its kind of mind blowing.   

 Not that it doesn't happen all over the Internet, which is partly why the Internet is so incredible. The best and the worst, right? So many options.                                             

Then I see another little button that says NOW and it tells you how many people are looking at what little biddy things you wrote ...right now.                                                        

Then I sit there going, well. Okay. What a trip. Oh, and you all probably know all this stuff already...but it tells you something called 'pageviews by browsers' and then 'pageviews by operating systems'. Which kind of seems almost as invasive as when you have your iphone on the internet-thing as someone drives you down the road, and on the screen comes all your neighbor's tags for their internet connections...popping up on your screen. But that's life, isn't it? All this stuff.                                                                

       So , anyway, I have slowly become used to this idea. That when I have a delicious time enjoying some amazing historical or cultural or political or artistic blog, I now am part of their statistics.....similar to when you look at photos and begin to remember that the people in the photo are responding ....to the person taking the photo. That look on their faces...is for that person with the camera.

Same with me looking at your blog. Same as you looking at mine.             

I'm slowly starting to adjust to this brave new world of bloggery, of mine and yours and things called 'stats' and all that stuff.                                                                             

And in my Acupressure/Herbal practice for the past 25 years, which is all over the internet anyway, clients have forever wanted to have photos and little worded snippets on the waiting room walls...of some cool place I went, etc... curiously curious, they always have been. I realized over the years that as I confidentially listen to them, week after year, to their dreams and wishes and pain and health improvement and tears, so they wait for my photos and descriptions of places and times and events also.                                                                               

The last thing that confused me about having a blog...was that thing where when you post something...and suddenly your 'stats' go flying up. I finally said to my husband, ‘Oh, so people 'subscribe' and when I plunk something there, it goes flying off to them right away and shows up as bunch of people suddenly looking. Right?'                                             

And he laughs, smiles, and says "Yeah, that's how it would work!!!' And I laugh too, awash with the wonder of modern life.

3.18.13 Luminous

See this flock of Beech leaves?

Heed the rustling chorale

It’s way past mid March

yet they’re resolute, held

Casually shimmering

neath Maple Blossom Moon

illuminating such a cluster of   

darkness-spun woods

What wanton wind

shall finally release them-

Fagus grandifolia - to flash into night?

Listen- as this year's 

eager buds do swell

Oh, my diaphanous

forest queen – comes our

child song of smooth branch;

refrain of Luminous mother tree